The plan calls for siphoning off billions from cities and counties. Many will likely go bankrupt as a consequence. What is the difference if a city goes bankrupt, a county goes bankrupt, or a state goes bankrupt. They are all pieces of the same whole...America.

What has happend to our country. Does anyone care? Is anyone competent?

Not only is the plan going to destroy smaller municipalities within the same state, the plan is a fraud and no where comes close to balancing the budget as claimed. The Senate knows that revenues are falling off a cliff and the deficit is going to be much larger than $26 Billion.

If the state tries to represent anything different when it floats debt, it will be liable for fraud.

Folks, none of this is hard to see if you just think.....isn't it about time we started doing a little.

Seriously... those are some sad articles. I really hope the politicians are feeling the pain of their constituencies. I email blasted my friends and family again yesterday, hoping they'll get a clue about the tsunami...

Are you living in Sacramento? I'm originally from that area (lived there 18 years). My parents both work in El Dorado County. Furlough just hit my mom with a 5% pay cut. She told me of many people in Sac county that are losing their house due to the 14% pay cuts. And I mean a LOT. More foreclosures, deflationary pay, etc. never sounds good for CA or the US for that matter!

So.... I might agree that the budget passage was less than ideal, but can any one of you explain in detail what you believe the state should have done? I myself don't have any suggestions, but I'd sure like to know what Alstry[nomics] and his followers would have proposed to the state of california to fix it's budget woes. This blog is a classic "jump on the bandwagon" and it pains me to see this type of behaviour - you would think that nobody in this entire country can do anything right based on the negativity... sheesh!

Somebody must have done something right at some point in time because I step back and look at my situation and can only be thankful for all of the opportunities that have been presented to me over the years, and even in the present.

I am in complete agreement. Simply address the problem now rather than kick the can down the road. Cut, cut, cut, and raise taxes (selectively). We simply do not have the money and are using optimistic forecasts. We need to get into a realistic budget. I am reminded of a college student making minimum payments on their credit card because "Someday I'll have a bunch more money to pay it off". Do not go into excessive debt (California) and take care of your problems now! We simply continue paying more and more in interest as the state's credit rating goes lower and lower.

#7 - Agreed, some accounting tricks are being used, but the amount "recovered" isn't THAT much of the total. Easy to cut services and raise taxes? Not easy at all when no matter what is proposed to make the budget happen there ends up being some group(s) that make a loud enough noise to scare the politicians.

Obviously what is happening in CA is not bad enough to prompt the citizens to come up with a better idea. You can't make everyone happy, but they obviously didn't want to make everybody mad.